Weekly Current Affairs (8th to 14th January 2023) Part - 1 | Current Affairs & Hindu Analysis: Daily, Weekly & Monthly - UPSC PDF Download

Joshimath Land Subsidence

Context: Due to land subsidence, Joshimath - a key transit point for tourists travelling to Badrinath and Hemkund Sahib - developed cracks, causing panic and protests among the local population.

• Joshimath has been declared a landslide-subsidence zone and over 60 families living in uninhabitable houses in the sinking town have been evacuated to temporary relief centres.

Where is Joshimath Located?

• Joshimath is a hilly town located on the Rishikesh-Badrinath National Highway (NH-7) in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand.
• The city serves as a tourist town as it acts as an overnight rest stop for people visiting Badrinath, Auli, Valley of Flowers, and Hemkund Sahib, among other important religious and tourist locations in the state.
• Joshimath is also of great strategic importance to the Indian armed forces and is home to one of the Army's most important cantonments.
• The town (fall in high-risk seismic Zone-V) is traversed by running streams with a high gradient from Vishnuprayag, a confluence of the Dhauliganga and the Alaknanda rivers.
• It is home to one of the four cardinal maths or monasteries established by Adi Shankara - Sringeri in Karnataka, Dwarka in Gujarat, Puri in Odisha and Joshimath near Badrinath in Uttarakhand.

Why is Joshimath Sinking?

Background:

• Cracks on walls and buildings were first reported in 2021, as Chamoli district of Uttarakhand experienced frequent landslides and flooding.
• As per reports, the Uttarakhand government's expert panel in 2022 found that several pockets of Joshimath are "sinking" owing to man-made and natural factors.
• It was found that a gradual settling or sudden sinking of the earth's surface due to the removal or displacement of subsurface materials — has induced structural defects and damage in almost all wards of the city.

Reasons:

• Site of an Ancient landslide: According to the 1976 Mishra Committee report, Joshimath lies on a deposit of sand and stone, it's not on the main rock. It lies on an ancient landslide. The report added that undercutting by river currents of Alaknanda and Dhauliganga are also playing their part in bringing landslides.
• The committee had recommended that restrictions be placed on heavy construction work, blasting or digging to remove boulders for road repairs and other construction, felling of trees.
• Geography: Scattered rocks in the area are covered with old landslide debris comprising boulders, gneissic rocks, and loose soil, with a low bearing capacity.
  • These gneissic rocks are highly weathered and have a low cohesive value with a tendency of high pore pressure when saturated with water, especially during monsoons.
• Construction Activities: Increased construction, hydroelectric projects, and the widening of the NH have made the slopes highly unstable in the last couple of decades.
• Land Erosion: Due to the running streams from Vishnuprayag and sliding along the natural streams are the other reasons behind the city's fate.

Impact:

• At least 66 families have fled the town while 561 houses have reported cracks. A government official said that over 3000 people have been affected so far.

What can be done to save Joshimath?

• Experts recommend a complete shutdown of development and hydroelectric projects in the region. But the urgent need is to relocate the residents to a safer place and then reimagine the town's planning to accommodate the new variables and the changing geographical factors.
• Drainage planning is one of the biggest factors that needs to be studied and redeveloped. The city is suffering from poor drainage and sewer management as more and more waste is seeping into the soil, loosening it from within. The irrigation department has been asked by the state government to look into the issue and create a new plan for the drainage system.
• Experts have also suggested replantation in the region, especially at the vulnerable sites to retain soil capacity. There is a need for a coordinated effort between the government and civil bodies with the aid of military organizations like the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) to save Joshimath.
• While the state already has weather forecasting technology that can warn people of local events, its coverage needs to be improved.
  • Weather forecasting in Uttarakhand is done through satellites and Doppler weather radars (instruments that use electromagnetic energy to find precipitation and determine its location and intensity).
• The state government also needs to take scientific studies more seriously, which clearly spell out the reasons for the current crisis. Only then will the state put an end to its development frenzy.

What is Land Subsidence?

• Land subsidence is a gradual settling or sudden sinking of the Earth’s surface.
• Subsidence - sinking of the ground because of underground material movement—is most often caused by the removal of water, oil, natural gas, or mineral resources out of the ground by pumping, fracking, or mining activities.
• Subsidence can also be caused by natural events such as earthquakes, soil compaction, glacial isostatic adjustment, erosion, sinkhole formation, and adding water to fine soils deposited by wind (a natural process known as loess deposits).
• Subsidence can happen over very large areas like whole states or provinces, or very small areas like the corner of your yard.

What is Landslide?

• A landslide is defined as the movement of a mass of rock, debris, or earth down a slope.
• They are a type of mass wasting, which denotes any downward movement of soil and rock under the direct influence of gravity.
• The term landslide encompasses five modes of slope movement: falls, topples, slides, spreads, and flows.

Census

Context: Recently, the government has extended the date for states and Union territories to finalise their administrative boundaries by June 2023, which may delay the Census 2021 Exercise.

• During a Census operation – both the house-listing phase and the population enumeration — the states and Union territories are not supposed to change the boundaries of districts, towns, villages and tehsils.

What are the Implications of Delay?

Affect Political Representation:

• Census are used to determine the number of seats to be reserved for SCs and STs in Parliament, State legislatures, local bodies, and government services.
• Therefore, delay in the Census means that the data from the 2011 Census would continue to be used.
• In many towns and even panchayats that have seen rapid changes in the composition of their population over the last decade, this would mean that either too many or too few seats are being reserved.

Delimitation of Of Constituency:

• Delimitation of parliamentary and Assembly constituencies would continue to be based on 2001 Census till data from a Census after 2026 are published.

Unreliable Estimates on Welfare Measures:

• The delay will impact government schemes and programmes, and would result in unreliable estimates from other surveys on consumption, health and employment, which depend on census data to determine policy and welfare measures.
• As many as 100 million people are likely being excluded from the government’s food subsidy programme—the Public Distribution System (PDS)—as the population figures used to calculate the number of beneficiaries are from the 2011 census.

Impact Houselisting:

• It takes nearly a year to prepare an abridged house list for the entire country which the enumerator uses to locate an address.
• The main purpose of the houselisting is to prepare a list of all households that are to be surveyed before undertaking population enumeration, besides providing data on housing stock, amenities and the assets available with each of the households.
• The population enumeration follows the houselisting after a year.
• So, for Census 2011, the government conducted houselisting between April and September 2010, and the population enumeration in February 2011.
• Houselisting is important because unlike the US, India does not have a robust address system.

Migration:

• The images of migrant workers rushing out of the cities and walking the highways towards their villages during the first COVID lockdown brought their plight to the spotlight and raised queries on the numbers, causes and patterns of migration, which could not be answered using outdated 2011 Census data.
• For example, the Centre had no answers on how many migrants were likely to be stranded in each city or State and in need of food relief or transport support.
• The new Census is likely to capture the extent of the observed movement in migration trends towards smaller two-tier towns apart from the large metropolitan centres.
• It could help answer questions of what kind of healthcare and social services are most needed for migrants and where.

How is the 2021 Census being Different from Previous ones?

• For the first time the data is collected digitally via mobile applications (installed on enumerator’s phone) with a provision of working in offline mode.
• The Census Monitoring & Management Portal will act as a single source for all officers/officials involved in Census activities to provide multi-language support.
• First time that information of a person from the Transgender Community and members living in the family will be collected.
  • Earlier there was a column for male and female only.

What is the Census?

Definition:

• Population Census is the total process of collecting, compiling, analyzing and disseminating demographic, economic and social data pertaining, at a specific time, of all persons in a country or a well-defined part of a country.
• Census is the basis for reviewing the country's progress in the past decade, monitoring the ongoing schemes of the government and plan for the future
• It provides an instantaneous photographic picture of a community, which is valid at a particular moment of time.
• The census also provides the trends in population characteristics.

Frequency:

• The exercise is undertaken every 10 years in India.
• The first complete census of an Indian city was conducted in 1830 by Henry Walter (known as the father of the Indian Census) in Dacca.
• First non-synchronous Census was conducted in India in 1872 during the reign of Governor-General Lord Mayo.
• The first synchronous census was taken in 1881, by W.C. Plowden, Census Commissioner of India. Since then, censuses have been undertaken uninterruptedly once every ten years.

Other Countries:

• Every 10 years in many countries (Ex. United States and Britain) and every five years (Ex. Canada, Japan) or at irregular intervals in some countries.

Nodal Ministry:

• The decennial Census is conducted by the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Ministry of Home Affairs.
• Until 1951, the Census Organisation was set up on an ad-hoc basis for each Census.

Legal/Constitutional Backing:

• Census is conducted under the provisions of the Census Act, 1948.
• The bill for this Act was piloted by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the then Home Minister of India.
• The population census is a Union subject under Article 246 of India Constitution.
• It is listed at serial number 69 of the seventh schedule of the constitution.

Confidentiality of Information:

• The information collected during the population Census is so confidential that it is not even accessible to the courts of law.
• The confidentiality is guaranteed by the Census Act, 1948. The law specifies penalties for both public and census officials for non-compliance or violation of any provision of the Act.

What is the Significance of the Census?

Source of Information:

• The Indian Census is the largest single source of a variety of statistical information on different characteristics of the people of India.
• Researchers and Demographers use census data to analyze growth and trends of population and make projections.

Good Governance:

• The data collected through the census is used for administration, planning and policy making as well as management and evaluation of various programmes by the Government.

Demarcation:

• Census data is also used for demarcation of constituencies and allocation of representation to Parliament, State legislative assemblies and the local bodies.
• The Census data are also used to determine the number of seats to be reserved for SCs and STs in Parliament, State legislatures, local bodies, and government services.
• In case of panchayats and municipal bodies, reservation of seats for SCs and STs is based on their proportion in the population.

Better Access for Businesses:

• The census data is also important for business houses and industries for strengthening and planning their business for penetration into areas, which had hitherto remained, uncovered.

Giving Grants:

• The Finance Commission provides grants to the states on the basis of population figures available from the Census data.

Draft Norms Announced by UGC for Foreign Universities

Context: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has announced draft norms for facilitating foreign universities and educational institutions to set up campuses in India which allow them autonomy in decision making.

What are the Draft Norms Announced by the UGC?

Sets Criteria:

• A foreign university with a rank among the top 500 global rankings or a foreign educational institution of repute in home jurisdiction can apply to the UGC to set up a campus in India.

Application Process:

• The application will be considered by a standing committee appointed by the UGC which will submit its recommendations within 45 days after examining the institution’s credibility, programmes offered, their potential.
• Subsequently, within 45 days, the UGC may grant in-principal approval to the foreign institution to set up campuses in India within two years.
• The initial approval will be for 10 years, which can be extended.

Mode of Teaching:

• It will also have autonomy to recruit faculty and staff from India and abroad.
• The courses to be offered cannot be in online and open and distance learning mode.
• The qualifications awarded to the students in the Indian campus should have equivalence with those awarded by the institutions in their country of origin.
• Such universities and colleges cannot offer any such programme of study which jeopardises the national interest of India or the standards of higher education in India.

Fund Management:

• Foreign universities will be allowed to repatriate funds to parent campuses.
• Cross-border movement of funds and maintenance of Foreign Currency Accounts, mode of payments, remittance, repatriation, and sale of proceeds, if any, will be as per the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) 1999 and its Rules.
• It will also have the autonomy to decide its fee structure, and will face no caps that are imposed on Indian institutions. The fee should be “reasonable and transparent.

What is the Significance of the Move?

• Nearly 13 lakh students were studying abroad in 2022 according to the Ministry of External Affairs data; and as per the RBI, Rs 5 billion was lost in foreign exchange due to students going overseas in FY 2021-2022
• Allowing foreign universities to set-up campuses in India will also ensure that all our students — there are around 40 million pursuing higher education — have access to global quality education.
• The ideal of setting up foreign universities’ campuses in India is also mentioned in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
  • The NEP says that the top 100 universities in the world will be facilitated to operate in India through a legislative framework.
  • In a way, the draft regulations released only seek to institutionalize the NEP’s vision.
• This move will pave the way for India to become a global destination for education.
• It will not only help prevent brain drain and loss of forex due to Indian students studying overseas, but also help to attract overseas students to India.
• It will encourage competition among various players in the country, and allow faculty to faculty research collaboration among various universities.
• After Chinese students, Indians are the largest category of foreign students in countries like the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.

What are the Concerns?

• It is believed that the social justice concerns have been ignored which is very important in our context where higher education is very effective means for social change.
• Draft regulations have no provisions for caste-based/economic-based/minority-based/armed forces-based/Divyang-based/Kashmiri migrants/representation-based/women reservation in student admissions.
• Section of educational practitioners has expressed reservations about allowing international universities to operate in India as it would raise the cost of education, rendering it out of reach for a large part of the population.
• Repatriation of funds to the parent institution abroad, which was prohibited previously, has also been allowed.
• There’s also no requirement for foreign education providers to maintain a corpus fund to operate in India.

Way Forward

• If the Indian higher education sector truly opens up, it will be one step forward in India’s aspiration to become a knowledge society again, if not actually a Vishwa-guru.
• Not protectionism and shuttering our intellectual borders, but competition and collaboration with the best will help usher in a true Indian renaissance.

The Indian Diaspora

Context: Recently, the Prime Minister inaugurated the 17th Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas convention in Madhya Pradesh on the occasion of Pravasi Bhartiya Diwas (PBD).

• Over the years, the convention, which began in 2003, has grown in size and scope, particularly since 2015, when the yearly convention became a biennial affair.

What is Diaspora?

Origin:

• The term diaspora traces its roots to the Greek diaspeiro, which means dispersion. The Indian diaspora has grown manifold since the first batch of Indians were taken to counties in the eastern pacific and the Caribbean islands under the ‘Girmitiya’ arrangement as indentured labourers.

Classifications:

• Non-Resident Indians (NRI): NRIs are Indians who are residents of foreign countries. A person is considered NRI if:
  • She/he is not in India for 182 days or more during the financial year Or;
  • If he/she is in India for less than 365 days during the 4 years preceding that year and less than 60 days in that year.
• Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs): PIO refers to a foreign citizen (except a national of Pakistan, Afghanistan Bangladesh, China, Iran, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Nepal) who:
  • At any time held an Indian passport, or who or either of their parents/ grandparents/great grandparents was born and permanently resided in India as defined in the Government of India Act, 1935 or who is a spouse of a citizen of India or a PIO.
  • The PIO category was abolished in 2015 and merged with the OCI category.
• Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs): A separate category of OCI was carved out in 2005. An OCI card was given to a foreign national:
  • Who was eligible to be a citizen of India on January 26, 1950
  • Was a citizen of India on or at any time after January 26, 1950 or belonged to a territory that became part of India after August 15, 1947.
  • Minor children of such individuals, except those who were a citizen of Pakistan or Bangladesh, were also eligible for OCI cards.

Geographical Spread:

• According to the World Migration Report, 2022, India has the largest emigrant population in the world in 2020, making it the top origin country globally, followed by Mexico, Russian and China.
• The data shared by the government in Parliament in 2022 showed that the geographical spread of the Indian diaspora is vast. The countries with over 10 lakh overseas Indians include:
  • United States of America, the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Kuwait and Canada.

Remittances:

• According to the World Bank Migration and Development Brief, released in 2022, for the first time a single country, India, is on track to receive more than USD 100 billion in yearly remittances.
• The World Migration Report notes that India, China, Mexico, the Philippines and Egypt are (in descending order) among the top five remittance recipient countries.

What is the Significance of the Indian Diaspora?

• Enhancing India’s Soft Power: Indian diaspora is one of the richest minorities in many developed countries. Their advantage is evident in “diaspora diplomacy”, whereby they act as “bridge-builders” between their home and adopted countries.
  • The Indian diaspora is not just a part of India’s soft power, but a fully transferable political vote bank as well.
  • Also, many people of Indian origin hold top political positions in many countries, which enhances India’s political clout at multilateral institutions like the United Nations.
• Economic Contribution: Remittances sent by the Indian diaspora have positive systemic effects on the Balance of Payments (BOP), which help to bridge a wider trade deficit.
  • The migration of less-skilled labor (especially to West Asia) has helped in bringing down disguised unemployment in India.
  • Further, the migrant workers facilitated the flow of tacit information, commercial and business ideas, and technologies into India.

Centre Vs Union

Context: Since the Tamil Nadu government shunned the usage of the term ‘Central government’ in its official communications by replacing it with ‘Union government’, it has erupted the Union Vs Centre Debate.

• It has been seen as a major step towards regaining the consciousness of Indian Constitution.

What is the Constitutionality of the Term Union/Centre?

• There is no mention of the term ‘Central government’ in the Constitution of India because the Constituent Assembly did not use the term ‘Centre’ or ‘Central government’ in all of its 395 Articles in 22 Parts and eight Schedules in the original Constitution.
• There are only references of the ‘Union’ and the ‘States’ with the executive powers of the Union wielded by the President acting on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister.
• Even though there is no reference to the ‘Central government’ in the Constitution, the General Clauses Act, 1897 gives a definition for it.
  • The ‘Central government’ for all practical purposes is the President after the commencement of the Constitution.

What is the Intent of the Constituent Assembly?

• Article 1(1) of the Constitution of India says “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.”
• On 13th December, 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru introduced the aims and objectives of the Constituent Assembly by resolving that India shall be a Union of territories willing to join the “Independent Sovereign Republic”.
  • The emphasis was on the consolidation and confluence of various provinces and territories to form a strong united country.
• While submitting the draft Constitution in 1948, Dr B R Ambedkar, chairman of the drafting committee, had said that the committee had used the word ‘Union’ because:
  • (a) the Indian federation was not the result of an agreement by the units, and
  • (b) the component units had no freedom to secede from the federation.
• The members of the Constituent Assembly were very cautious of not using the word ‘Centre’ or ‘Central government’ in the Constitution as they intended to keep away the tendency of centralizing of powers in one unit.

What is the Difference Between Union & Centre?

• According to constitution expert Subash Kashyap, from the point of the usage of the words, 'center' indicates a point in the middle of a circle, whereas 'Union' is the whole circle.
  • In India, the relationship between the so-called 'Centre' and States, as per the Constitution, is actually a relationship between the whole and its parts.
• Both the Union and the States are created by the Constitution, both derive their respective authority from the Constitution.
  • The one is not subordinate to the other in its own field and the authority of one is to coordinate with that of the other.
• The judiciary is designed in the Constitution to ensure that the Supreme Court, the tallest court in the country, has no superintendence over the High Court.
  • Though the Supreme Court has appellate jurisdiction, not only over High Courts but also over other courts and tribunals, they are not declared to be subordinate to it.
  • In fact, the High Courts have wider powers to issue prerogative writs despite having the power of superintendence over the district and subordinate courts.
• In very common parlance, Union gives a sense of Federal while centre gives more of a sense of unitary government.
  • But practically both are the same in the Indian political system.

What are the Associated Issues with the Term Central Government?

• Discarded By Constituent Assembly: The word ‘Centre’ is not used in the Constitution; the makers of the Constitution specifically discarded it and instead used the word ‘Union’.
• Colonial Legacy: 'Centre' is a hangover from the colonial period because the bureaucracy in the Secretariat, New Delhi who are used to using the word ‘Central Laws,’ ‘Central legislature,’ etc, and so everyone else, including the media, started using the word.
• Conflict With Idea of Federalism: India is a federal government. The power to govern is divided between a government for the whole country, which is responsible for subjects of common national interest, and the states, which look after the detailed day-to-day governing of the state.
  • According to Subash Kashyap, using the term ‘Centre’ or ‘central government’ would mean state governments are subservient to it.

Way Forward

• The federal nature of the Constitution is its basic feature and cannot be altered, thus, the stakeholders wielding power intend to protect the federal feature of our Constitution.
• A diverse and large country like India requires a proper balance between the pillars of federalism, i.e., autonomy of states, national integration, centralisation, decentralisation, nationalisation, and regionalisation.
  • Extreme political centralisation or chaotic political decentralisation can both lead to the weakening of Indian federalism.
• The satisfactory and lasting solution of the vexed problem is to be found not in the statute-book but in the conscience of men in power.